CA Immo slams Immofinanz counter-bid as 'emotional response'

CA Immo has rejected the partial takeover offer announced on Monday by fellow Vienna-listed property company, Immofinanz, as an 'emotional response' to the earlier CA Immo-O1 Group offer for a stake in Immofinanz.

In a strongly worded statement, CA Immo's management board said, 'We view the offer of Immofinanz as an emotional response to the offer of CA Immo. Our offer remains unaffected and it will be published next Wednesday with an unchanged offer price of €2.80.'

The statement continued, 'As for the strategic rational of this transaction, the management of Immofinanz must be accountable for this deal to the shareholders of Immofinanz. In the light of the current challenges in Russia, that were also evidenced by the recent disappointing Q3 results, we – as a 3% shareholder in Immofinanz – currently see different priorities for Immofinanz.'

CA Immo specialises in office properties in Central European capitals and has €3.6 bn of assets in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe.

In late February 2015, CA Immo and Russian investor O1 Group unveiled an offer to acquire a 15% stake in Immofinanz, which has €6.8 bn of real estate under management in Austria, Germany, CEE and Russia. Immofinanz dismissed that the offer for the minority stake as 'ridiculous'.

Immofinanz opened up a new front in the share wars on Monday when it announced it would offer €18.50 per share, or about €530 mln for just short of a 29% stake in CA Immo.

Vienna and Warsaw-listed Immofinanz said that the offer price per share reflected the level 01 Group paid for a 26% stake in CA Immo. O1 Group acquired the stake for about €480 mln on 12 February 2015 through the purchase of shares from UniCredit Bank Austria and through a voluntary partial public offer. This added to the 16.4% obtained through an initial €300 mln investment in CA Immo. O1 Group and CA Immo then unveiled the offer to acquire the stake in Immofinanz.

See also Immofinanz launches €530m counter-offer for CA Immo shares

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Immofinanz and CA Immo feature in 49th and 151st respectively in PropertyEU's Top Investors ranking of dealmakers by transaction volume in 2014. Check out the Top Investors App for the ranking and background information on the top European dealmakers of 2014.